To lose one banter contest is unfortunate...

In common with almost everybody else in the world, I know very little about preparing a football team for a top-level international tournament, which is why I make a particular point of never phoning Alan Green with my opinions on England's tactics and team selection. (It is a shame others do not feel similarly constrained, as that could free valuable airtime for a long overdue Steely Dan revival).

On the opening weekend of a major tournament, though, you need something to dissipate the tension, and yesterday evening I found myself, against my better instincts, playing boss.

Having paid meticulous attention to my personal preparations for the event - Threshers' special offers analysed, and compared with supermarket prices vis à vis ABV of preferred lager brands, Domino's placed on speed dial, wife informed Strictly Come Dancing available on bedroom television only - I settled down to help Sven with his.

In trying to plot a route via which England might win the championship, I looked for one area in which we might justly claim to be world beaters, and I think I may have found it: the banter.

Reporters doing pre-match interviews last night were obsessed with "the banter". They would not shut up about the banter. David Beckham himself took his lead from this, and played up the importance of football's new holy grail. When Gary Lineker opened his BBC interview with a light-hearted remark about the metatarsal injury the England captain carried into the 2002 World Cup, saying how much better it must be this time, Becks replied: "That's right. This time I can be with the lads training, and have the banter I didn't have before the World Cup." International football novice that I am, I thought the main effect of Beckham's foot injury had been that it left him short of match practice, and possibly caused him to pull out of tackles he might otherwise have completed. Turns out our failure to lift the World Cup in Japan was down to nothing more than a fatal banter deficiency.

Clearly, steps have been taken to make sure a similar lack does not blight us this time - a paperback edition of the collected works of Oscar Wilde has been packed in each England player's luggage alongside the performance car mags, and Stephen Fry has been added to the coaching strength to help slow learners - and in that department at least we seem to have stolen a march on the French.

Damian Johnson, who reported from the French camp for Football Focus, was obviously in a banter-free zone. "What's the banter been like?" he asked Thierry Henry, whose shrug (national stereotype or not, that's what he did) seemed to say "Non-existent". Henry conceded that he might say hello to Arsenal colleagues lining up for England, but made it clear any exchanges would be as free of wit as, say, the later work of Jacques Tati.

Banter dominated the agenda on Talksport's Sunday Sports Breakfast as well with Alan Brazil revealing that Patrick Vieira, greeted in his hotel by Arsenal fans singing his name in the style of Dean Martin's hit Volare, remained stony faced. By contrast, Alvin Martin (no relation) said that Ashley Cole would be sending "humorous" text messages to Arsenal's French contingent all day. "He's a devil like that," said Martin.

While no one is saying insufficient banter will lead to the French losing their crown, if you are looking for lads who can lift the cup and then parade round with it while wearing a pair of comedy breasts, maybe you have to look beyond the favourites.

The French are among several teams tipped to win the trophy by Ian Wright, who made a confident start on the BBC's panel, proving himself adept at what one is forced to describe as the banter. When Peter Schmeichel complimented Greece's goalkeeper Nikopolidis on his bravery, diving at the feet of a Portuguese attacker, Wright commented: "Yeah, but he can use his hands. What are you talking about?" Wright confessed that he had not liked the look of the Greek keeper, who had been "dropping everything in the warm-up".

"It's better to drop everything in the warm-up rather than in the match," observed Alan Hansen, to which Wright replied, "You might be right there, Al. That's why you are where you are." Not exactly the Algonquin round table, I grant you, but if Wright, Hansen, Schmeichel and Lineker are the BBC's preferred midfield four, their bosses will have been more than happy with their start. Though Gary can still be a touch clunky delivering the scripted ad-libs ("Portugal proved it's very difficult to remove Greece"), the stuff he seems to come up with himself is getting better. When someone referred to Portugal's coach Luiz Felipe Scolari as Big Fil, Lineker countered with "Big fill - two words you never want to hear on live television".

Fans of puns - most rather better than that one - will be pleased at the return of Fantasy Football, where there was a good joke about the Portuguese riot police being issued with football-shaped rubber bullets (true). David Baddiel said he could imagine a policeman lining one up and seeing if he could "bend it round the wall" and into the mob.

I also greatly enjoyed their guest Matt Lucas's joke underlining the fact that we might be able to out-banter the French, but their football people remain mostly our intellectual superiors. Arsène Wenger, said Lucas, "can speak 29 languages, including Pingu."